Before
by Anna Yukihira
Summary: The night before Silver is kidnapped, Giovanni sits by his son.


Giovanni watched his son sleep, his tiny chest rising and falling, still clutching Sneasel's Poké Ball in his hand. He shut the fairy tale book, from which he had read Silver a bedtime story, with a content smile.

No one would've thought that the tough gym leader of Viridian City was such a softie. Heck, he was known for ruthlessly defeating trainers of all ages. He was renowned as the strongest gym leader in Kanto, a reputation he prized.

None of that stopped him from loving his son or from being a good father. He spent as much time as he could with Silver, even bringing him to the gym occasionally, where the boy would cheer on his father with Sneasel at his side. On those days, Giovanni always won.

His son took after his mother a good deal, inheriting her red hair and the light grey eyes for which he had been named. Giovanni had wanted Silver to know that he was as precious to him as the valuable metal was to others.

Someone had once asked him, "If that's the reason behind his name, then why didn't you call him Gold? After all, gold medals are better than silver and no one wants to be second best." It was a valid question, but one he had an answer for. Gold was soft, malleable, something that could be scratched with little effort. He didn't want that for Silver. He didn't want his son to be damaged so easily.

Though he resembled her physically, Silver couldn't be more different from his wife personality-wise. She had been a patient woman, content to take things at a slow pace, but Silver was full of energy and life, strong and happy.

He hadn't known what to do after she died giving birth to Silver. The grief was still there, a raw wound in his heart that never healed or even started to heal no matter how much time passed. But at that moment, he'd heard the screams of his newborn son and looked at his red, crumpled-up face, and he knew he was going to make it through. He had to. Silver needed him.

The toddler turned over in his sleep, making the nametag on his pajamas clearly visible. Another thing he had inherited from his mother was a bad habit of consistently losing anything that wasn't nailed down. He'd even lost Sneasal a few times. Luckily, the feline dark-type had a better sense of direction than his owner and would promptly find his way back to the house, where he would wait patiently for Silver's return.

Giovanni chuckled at the memories. This was such a common occurrence that over the past few months, Sneasel and Silver had made a game out of it. When Sneasel came back, he would hide himself somewhere in the house and Silver would look for him. Last time it had taken almost three hours before his son found his Pokémon hiding in the shower. And the time Sneasel was in the cabinet under the kitchen sink . . .

Part of the reason why it always took so long was that Silver was still unsteady on his feet. Sometimes he would take a step forward and then his legs would give way underneath him. Not only that, but Silver was too small to climb the stairs quickly. He usually ended up crawling. At a snail's pace.

All proud parents found their children adorable, but Giovanni took it to a ridiculous extent. He was tempted to and sometimes did snap photos every single time Silver looked at him with those wide grey eyes. He bragged to every gym leader when Silver took his first step and said his first word (dada) and drank a bottle by himself . . . in fact, it had gotten so bad that the others unanimously banned any mention of Silver, even as a reference to the color or the metal. None of them wanted to encourage the doting parent.

Sometimes he wondered what it'd be like if his wife was still alive. Would she encourage him or admonish him? He was an impulsive, somewhat rash person by nature, and she had long proved a stabilizing influence on him, helping him control his worst fits of temper. Would she stabilize his joy as well? Was the reason why he devoted so much time to his son because his wife wasn't there and he was compensating?

He thought about it for a while and decided that if his wife was alive, maybe he wouldn't spend the same amount of time with Silver, but the bragging and the picture taking and all the rest would not cease. It was probably embedded somewhere in his genes.

Giovanni went to his own room and slept peacefully in the night, never dreaming of the tragedy that would befall him the next day. Never dreaming that his tearful neighbor would tell him a giant bird had snatched away his son, and of the burning, long suppressed rage that would well up inside.

How could they take his little son away from him? How could they steal away his last living relative? How could they take the only thing he had left to live for?

Giovanni was like a volcano. He had been dormant, but that didn't mean he was dead.

The eruption would be deadly.


End file.
